Eyes on the Street: Bike-Share Stations Come to Williamsburg

A bike-share station was installed at South 4th Street and Wythe Avenue on Saturday. Photo: BklynBiker/Twitter

Citi Bike’s rollout to Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and eastern Bedford-Stuyvesant was delayed by damage from Hurricane Sandy. But it looks like bike-share will be establishing a toehold in Williamsburg, with new stations installed in time for the system’s launch, now just one week away.

In December, DOT revealed that flooding damage at Citi Bike’s Brooklyn Navy Yard warehouse had shrunk the initial rollout from 420 stations to 293. Then in April, Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced that the recovery from the storm damage was sufficient to launch with 330 stations.

A map from Citi Bike (left) shows four stations in Williamsburg, while DOT's bike-share map indicates that as many as nine could be active soon.

The active Williamsburg stations popped up on the online bike-share maps last week, but it’s not yet clear how many will be installed in the neighborhood before Memorial Day. The Citi Bike website shows four active stations, while DOT’s bike-share map shows nine. We have a request in with DOT about which stations will be ready when.

Stephen Miller is a reporter for Streetsblog NYC. He has been covering the movement for safer streets, effective transit, and livable cities since 2012.

I was elated this morning when I saw a large station right in the middle of Broadway outside of Marlow & Daughters. That was prime Hasidic double parking territory, and is now gone. Yay!

Anonymous

What does the religion of the people who double park matter? I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen places full of double-parking Catholics, Protestants of various denominations, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists. I don’t think any have a better claim of being the champions of double-parking. The only religion that really wins in this regard is Automobilism–the faith that a higher power grants the divine right to go wherever one wants using one’s personal vehicle, and leave said vehicle wherever one wants regardless of the rights of other road users, including but not limited to other Automobilists.

What is interesting here, though, is what may unfold given the stories we’ve read of a bike lane removed from Williamsburg after complaints from Hasidic leaders about immodestly dressed female cyclists.

http://stopandmove.blogspot.com/ Jass

This religious group in particular has been very vocal against biking and street improvements of any kind. Look at the bike share map, see the giant gap in Brooklyn? Guess who lives there?

They use their religion to attack safer streets.

Anonymous

The one by the bike entrance on the Williamsburg Bridge has been there for at least a week or two. Now put some east of the BQE (and there seems to be one in the works) and I’ll be in business.

carma

i passed by a bunch of workers installing a station on bway and 41st. i cheered them on and said next Monday right? They said Yup and then asked me if i signed up for the membership. i held up my citibike fob which i already am proudly wearing, and they responded with an “awesome” with two thumbs up!

Clarke

Citibike map has been updated with Williamsburg stations

Anonymous

But are those Bed-Stuy locations new too? I didn’t realize it went that far east.

Because in Willburg you can tell by the uniform who is who. And if you want to pass through that area safely, it’s a pretty good idea (read:much safer) to ASSUME people wearing a certain uniform are going to try and mess with you while you are on a bike and they are in their cars.
And the lane removal wasn’t about scantily dressed female cyclists. It was a power play, on one person’s part to prove had City Hall’s ear, and to threaten to swing a voting block one way or another.
Cyclists and their attire as well as their riding though the neighborhood certainly matters to this crowd, but that bike lane removal was all politics.

J

Williamsburg will likely have some of the highest use of the system. When this gets to Greenpoint and LIC, you’ll see a ton of people taking Mike’s Bikes to a more convenient subway. This will be even more true on weekends, when there are service disruptions.

http://www.facebook.com/jeremylenz Jeremy Lenz

It looks like the map on citibikenyc.com was updated yesterday. It now includes the nine Williamsburg stations, as well as a station at Grand Army Plaza & Central Park South. It also moved a station from 60th and Broadway to Broadway between 60th & 61st.

Daphna

When bike-share comes to Long Island City in Queens (hopefully very soon!) the outer roadway lane on the south side of the Queensboro Bridge will need to be reclaimed from motorists and given to pedestrians. The outer roadway lane on the north side of the Queensboro Bridge was already reclaimed from motorists and and is currently a shared bike/ped path. However, with increasing bike volumes, that lane will need to be for bikes only because there will be too much bike/ped conflict. The mirror lane like it on the south side of the bridge needs to be given to pedestrians. I hope there will be the political will to do this. The outer roadway lanes work perfectly for bike or pedestrian use. They are each a single lane that is already separated from all the other lanes.

Daphna

It looks from the map like Turtle Bay residents were successful in getting their neighborhood deprived of docking stations. There are no docking stations on 1st Avenue north of 51st Street and only one on Sutton Place at 59th Street. Turtle Bay, already a transportation desert, must want to stay that way. They could have had this amenity in their neighborhood but they fought it. Fred Arcaro, the chair of the Transportation Committee of Manhattan Community Board 6 was especially influential in fighting bikeshare. He was also deceitful. CB6 conducted a survey of the proposed docking station locations. Fred Arcaro only forwarded the complaints to the DOT. Those who said they liked the proposed locations, or suggested a nearby location instead were not given to the DOT. Fred Arcaro only forwarded responses against the docking stations. Worse yet, he likely did not tell the DOT that he had filtered the responses so the DOT probably thought the negative feedback was the sum total of the feedback received about the proposed docking stations. Fred Arcaro also abused his power by refusing to share the responses he received with the Transportation Committee; he kept the responses to himself and made his own determination that the DOT should only see the negative feedback and did not tell the DOT that they were only seeing a partial selection of the feedback received.

Aside from Turtle Bay, I am concerned with other locations that do not have docking stations close enough together. Murray Hill has docking stations too far apart (also Fred Arcaro and CB6 territory). I would have liked to see docking stations every 3-4 blocks but there are many locations where the stations are 5-6 blocks apart.